Reform UK’s oil industry interests are a major turn-off for voters, new research reveals.
The think tank Persuasion UK tested five anti-Reform messages on 6,000 adults. According to the research, “by far the most impactful” message that dented support for Nigel Farage’s party was exposing its corporate, fossil fuel donors.
Five demographically-identical groups were shown information on one of five issues: Reform’s anti-asylum approach, its denial of climate facts, Farage’s support for NHS privatisation, the party’s fossil fuel interests, and its closeness to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Each of the groups was then asked how the information changed their views towards Farage and Reform.
According to Steve Akehurst, who was behind the research, voters were most responsive to two of the five messages.
Exposing the party’s funding sources, including those linked to the oil industry, led to a significant drop in support for Reform. Persuasion UK presented DeSmog’s findings that the party raised £2.3 million between the 2019 and 2024 elections from climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests – equivalent to 92 percent of its funding over the period.
Bringing this information to the attention of voters pushed down Farage’s popularity and “was the only message to significantly reduce willingness to vote for Reform”.
In his analysis of the research, Akehurst states that this message was particularly effective because “it tapped into a general mood of cynicism to politicians and hostility to big business”. He adds that it also provided “an explanatory framework” for why Farage advocates for lower taxes on the rich and the rolling back of workers’ rights.
Reform – which is actively trying to raise money from fossil fuel executives – is currently leading in the polls and could win a majority if a general election was held today.
The governing Labour Party, which supports the effort to reach net zero emissions by 2050, has been trialling various ways of curbing Reform’s popularity. Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband said that Reform MPs were climate “extremists” whose policies, if enacted, “would be the greatest dereliction of duty and betrayal of future generations”.
Reform campaigns to halt clean energy development, tax renewables companies, and ramp up fossil fuel production. Farage has denied basic climate facts, stating it is “absolutely bonkers” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant.
Voters also baulk at Farage’s friendship with Donald Trump. When this fact was highlighted by Persuasion UK, Farage’s favourability fell by 10.6 percentage points, and Reform’s favourability by 8 percentage points.
As revealed by DeSmog today, Farage has spent his first year in Parliament giving speeches to radical right-wing groups that have close connections to Trump. He has made at least nine trips to the U.S. over the past year, speaking at several pro-Trump rallies and attending the president’s post-election party at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
Trump has slashed life-saving government programmes, cut taxes for top earners, imposed tariffs on most of the world, arrested people for legal political activism, and cracked down on climate action.
As highlighted by Akehurst: “Contrary to what you’d think from various parts of the media, Trump is deeply unpopular in the UK including with some Reform voters… Using Farage’s personal closeness to Trump to make an argument about his ideological closeness, and what that means for the country, proves damaging to Reform.”
